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The Muscular Christianity Movement

Sports offered the supposedly geneticallyblessed elite young men an opportunity to display their potential as natural leaders. In effect, muscular Christianity was intended to produce the kind of leadership that aristocrats had historically exercised, especially in times of war. In contrast to aristocracy, where family ties had governed selection, muscular Christianity, which merged with the eugenics movement, was determined to scientifically produce a new breed of natural leaders on the basis of genetic inheritance as well as the young men’s own hard work and selfdiscipline. The expectation was that this new generation of leaders would carry out its duties and obligations so successfully that the rest of the population would naturally embrace their new brand of meritocratic leadership.

By the later part of the nineteenth century, football appeared to offer a partial response to the threat of declining masculinity. Organized Bostonstyle football emerged in elite secondary schools in the urban Northeast, such as Boston Latin and Dixwell’s. Some of these boys would eventually matriculate to Harvard, bringing their game with them, which would soon displace the regional versions of football that Yale, Princeton, and Penn had been playing (Miller 2011, p. 60). Because the sport appeared to offer an ideal means for addressing the threat of declining masculinity by toughening elite young men, it became a primary vehicle for developing muscular Christianity.

The more telling association of football with the capacity of empire building provided an obvious attraction for the sport, especially because of the parallels between the game and business. Scoring points as a team resembled the way corporations kept the books on profits, which flowed from the collective efforts of their workers.

Time management is a crucial consideration in running a business as well as a football game. Walter Camp was also chairman of the board of directors of the New Haven Clock Company, a family business. This latter connection is often mentioned regarding the introduction of the game clock in football (Collins 2013, pp. 22526). Finally, the authoritarian nature of coaching is quite similar to business management.

I notice how this physical fitness movement started just in time for the industrial revolution when masses of people moved from agricultural or manual skilled based jobs to the factories somehow being sprung up to industrialize America, England and Europe. Those industrial jobs with machinery doing much of the work obviously led to people not being as fit as they used to be. I'm not surprised a movement was started to make the masses exercise so the powers that be don't have slaves who are declining in health and physical ability. Also the cons behind all these sports invented where clocks, rules and similarities to battles in war just somehow were natural part of the sport when in fact it's by design to train people for being mechanical/robotic, rule oriented and obedient just like how they are supposed to be at their slave jobs.